The Proving Ground, by Michael Connelly
The Book
Mickey Haller is back in court. After his ex, Maggie McPherson (Maggie McFierce), wins her election for DA, he's out of criminal court and into federal civil litigation. The client, Brenda Randolph is suing a small AI startup called Tidalwav. Randolph is claiming Tidalwav's companion AI, Clair, told an impressionable teenager to kill her daughter and that's what led Becca's ex-boyfriend to kill her.
Before they can go to trial, Brenda is joined in the suit by Becc's ex-boyfriend's parents Trish and Ruce Colton. Aaron Colton is looking at a long stay in either jail or a mental facility for walking on their school grounds and killing Becca in front of multiple witnesses.
Joining Mickey Haller on the case are the usual suspects, Lorna and "Cisco" Wojciechowski and an unusual suspect, Jack McEvoy. We are told in story, Harry Bosch can't join the gang because he's having heart problems.
Maggie gets burned out of her home in he LA fires and moves back in with Mickey. They rekindle their romance. Mickey is happy because he believes he never loved anyone other than her.
As the case against Tidalwav goes on, a witness turns up dead, Tidalwav's surveillance scares several people, and makes Mickey angry. Opposing council, the Mason brothers, underestimate Mickey, but they have a trick or two up their sleeves as well.
Meanwhile, the daughter of one of Mickey's former defendants wants him to pursue a habeas petition for her father, on the ground he was wrongly convicted. She was misdiagnosed as a child, her osteogenesis imperfecta wasn't caught and her father has done nearly 20 years in jail for child abuse he never committed. Mickey agrees to take the case.
Ironically, this case, not the Tidalwav case causes a fracture between Maggie and Mickey. She decides not to ask of the client's release on the grounds Mickey should have known and defended his client with it when it went to trial all those years ago. Mickey is disappointed but goes back to working on the case.
When everything seems at their most desperate, the founder of Tidalwave offers Mickey and obscene amount of money, bribe money, to quit the case. Mickey refuses. And Tidalwav offers the plaintiffs more money than any sane person would refuse, all they have to do is drop the insistence that Tidalwav did anything wrong. Brenda refuses. The Coltons settle.
But when the Mason's blow a hole in Mickey's case, will he end up on top?
My Thoughts
As usual, Michael Connelly writes a very compelling book. And maybe it's because AI is coming for my job (novelist), or because it's so controversial among writers, that it seems I know as much about the basic information behind AI as Connelly. Indeed, the case whose pleadings he cited as inspiration, is a case several of my friends in the tech world have followed. Connelly is an excellent reporter and a very crafty novelist. Unlike the last time Connelly waded into the vast ocean of where advances in technology meets law, (see Chasing the Dime and molecular computing) Connelly has learned his lesson. He doesn't get to into the weeds of the tech, and he made sure this really was revolutionary tech, not speculative.
This novel is filled with all the thing novelist are supposed to do, a compelling reason to move forward in the scenes, believable scenarios, and characters at a transformational moment in their lives. Very nice.
Connelly has things to say about the demise of structured journalism. Far from the nostalgia of yesteryear, he's more focused on how journalist are working and if that works for them. And he promotes Substack of all things, which makes his foray onto James Patterson's Substack livestream when the book was released interesting. I can tell when the book was written and I can tell that Connelly himself at the time didn't know the nuances of Substack. So that let me see how he writes about what he writes more clearly. I learned a few things about story telling. This one is worth the read, even if you are me, and only in love with Mickey Haller.
How Much My Library Card Saved Me
I put in a request for this book on October 23rd, 2025, which is two days after release date. I picked up books from the library on October 25th, where I requested how my placement on the waitlist and was told I was at approximately 500th on the list. That means, which I checked the book out of the library, I waited almost 3 months to get it. Connelly has another book out this year, and I managed to put in a request on January 15th, the day after I picked up this book. We'll see how much better that worked. On a side note, I was not the last person on the list, because when I picked up the book on January 14th there were no renewals on it. It was still showing no renewals the day I finished reading it, January 24. But on the day of writing this review, January 30 there are now 3 renewals left. I know for a fact this means the last of the waitlist has been exhausted and there are now more books in the system than there is demand. This is AWESOME! I feel 90 to exhaust the waitlist is appropriate.
I am once again caught up in real time with Michael Connelly oeuvre. This book, is a first edition hardcover from Huntly Public Library and in really good shape. I believe there are 50 or so copies in the suburban system cover all 10 million of us. I strongly approve. There are no marks, nor dog ears in this book. I think fewer people are checking out books these days and as a result, those who remain are better educated in library book etiquette.
What I find interesting is at the back of this book, unlike the one I purchased just a few weeks before this book was released, does not have the Raising Readers as the last page. This book does. Interesting.
The inside cover of this book says is retailed for $32.00. That's the number I will use.
This Book $32.00
Library Items Reviewed This Year $174.88
Private Books
This Book $00.00
Total of Private Books $52.75
Total of All Items Reviewed This Year $239.63
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